I had a hispanic crew do a simple roofing job for me. I hired one of the most ‘respectable’ and credentialed roofing companies in the Washington DC area, Historical Roofing Inc.’ I paid a premium for this company because i wanted a very good roofing job. Since this company had a large job in DC they were under the gun on no, no I repeat, anglo supervisor ever was on site. These people managed to make a 5 day job last nearly a month and left my yard littered with roofing nails even after i collected nearly half a peck right around my house (including an entire belt of nails ready to be put into a nail gun that one of these damp Americans dropped from the roof). The roof had numerous ‘pop up’ shingles that necessitated some damp ones returning over and over again to ‘fix’ the problem. The problems were still around when I moved five years later. Not all of these fine folk work very hard and many work with zero common sense.
My job is very largely dealing with the consequences of poorly built buildings.
A major contributor in many cases is workers who are illiterate, generally in English, but often in any language.
Building design and materials have gotten a lot more sophisticated as we try to save money by doing more with less material. This requires careful attention to detail and manufacturer’s directions.
Which is tough to do if you no speak Englese.